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The delicate textural effects and vertical bands
that Newman had begun to explore are pursued further in works
such as The Command and Two Edges. In the
mid-1940s Newman became preoccupied with the Jewish myths
of Creation. One way of interpreting the bands is to relate
them to traditions that see light as a symbol for creation.
The Command takes its title from the Book of Genesis,
and refers to God's command 'Let there be Light'. The act
of creation, in which God separated dark from light, and heaven
from earth, is mirrored in the composition, divided by a creamy
yellow vertical band.
Newman came to regard all his works to this
date as preliminaries to the Onement series. The
work he later titled Onement I consisted of a dark
red field, with a bright red band running down the middle.
It was painted in 1948 on his forty-third birthday. The work
in this room, Onement III, came a year later, in
1949. For the first time, Newman felt that he had made a painting
that was not simply a variety of interchangeable elements
alluding to natural forms or atmospheric qualities, but an
indivisible whole, that represented nothing but itself. This
sense of wholeness is suggested by the title: Onement.
It also refers to the Jewish Day of Atonement (At-onement),
when a person repents of their sins, and is thus symbolically
renewed, as Newman's artistic vision had been renewed. He
later referred to the Onement series as 'the beginning
of my present life.'
The initial Onement was modest in size,
less than half the height of Onement III, which at
nearly six feet is tall enough to rise above the viewer. The
scale of the works was to become increasingly important to
Newman. The physical experience the viewer has when standing
in front of them, an effect combining colour, texture, and
scale, was key. For his first solo exhibition, in 1950, where
Onement III was shown, he wrote a statement saying
of his paintings: 'They are specific and separate embodiments
of feeling, to be experienced, each picture for itself.' In
Onement III, the life-size proportions emphasise
another way of looking at Newman's bands or zips: as the upright
human body, reduced to its simplest form.
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